The windows rattled when they first moved in. Amanda DeRise could feel a chill bay breeze coming from every large-pane portal of their six-bedroom fixer-upper from the Victorian era. She smiles now that the windows have stopped rattling. They fixed them.
DeRise, 33, and her husband, Vinny, 34, are in the middle of a war to transform a 140-year-old house into a home. That battle has transformed them, too. Both work in the tech industry; she works in HR, and he is a director of revenue operations for a firm. But they’ve become weekend warriors at home, shifting from tech-savvy to saw-handy, from spreadsheets to hanging sheets of drywall.
Their coastal enclave, in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, has become an expensive place to buy a home, with many properties nearing the one-million-dollar mark. After getting married in 2024, the DeRises felt that their well-earned nest egg would better be served in a well-worn property with good bones. Sweat equity would take care of the rest.
After DeRise’s dad sent her the listing online, the couple set up a showing.
“I thought it felt like a dollhouse with all its staircases and different floors,” she told The Epoch Times. “You could clearly see it needed so much TLC but I thought it had so much potential.”
Not everyone was on the same page. “Our realtor called it a money pit,” DeRise said.
The listing was slightly beyond the couple’s budget, but they had fallen in love with the coastal town.
“We knew if we were going to buy a home in our area that it was going to need to be a fixer-upper, rather than a move-in ready house,” she said, noting the high costs. “Buying a massive historic renovation was never something I thought we’d be taking on, but after seeing the house, I knew it was special.”
The couple “fell in love” with the house, so DeRise contacted its owner to share how they stood out from the crowd of house flippers. Knowing he had raised a family there, she sent him a letter speaking of their hopes to do the same. “The house would continue to be a place of warmth and happy memories,” she wrote. “We’d love to bring it back to its former glory.”
In early August 2024, the DeRises’ offer was accepted. They bought the house for $550,000 and moved in on Halloween night.
It certainly needed a lot of work. The roof damage was extensive, causing water seepage, peeling wallpaper everywhere, and stains throughout the rooms and the halls. The exterior desperately needed a paint job.
“At some point, every room in the house would need to be addressed,” DeRise said. “There was a good six months where we looked around and wondered what we got into.”
With winter on the way, the drafty windows would be their first battle. The massive single-pane portals all needed replacing, but the DeRises salvaged the ornate wood carving of the trim. They used every chance to save the home’s Victorian character—even if it meant spending more.
“The corner rosettes are detailed and something you couldn’t find today,” DeRise said.
They paid a craftsman, who spent two days chipping and sanding away old shellac and paint, before re-staining it.
The couple set up camp in the living room for their next major battle: the second floor. The stained, yellow carpet was taken out and all the walls were brought down to the frame.
“The house is built solid even after 140-plus years,” DeRise said. “When our contractors took down the walls a lot of them were really fascinated by the way it was built.”
HVAC was installed in the rooms, which had lacked heating. Two bedrooms were opened into one master.
Dust was everywhere.
And soon, from the rubble, signs of past life in the house began to emerge, one by one.
“It was truly a time capsule back to 1925,” DeRise said, speaking of a woman’s purse they found inside a wall. “There were receipts from the grocer, an upholstery store, and others. It was so interesting to see what things cost 100 years ago!”
She noted the items scrawled on the hand-written receipt: Lipstick, 50 cents. A hair net, 10 cents. A comb, 25 cents. Cleansing cream, 50 cents. The grand total: $1.35—roughly $24 in today’s economy.
It made her laugh. “My purse is also filled with store receipts,” she said. “So, 100 years later women haven’t changed one bit.”
And there was more.
From the walls, they plucked cigarette rolling papers, toy soldier figurines, a 1948 Stan Musial rookie baseball card, hair dye, and a vintage glass breast pump. Newspaper clippings featured vintage hand-drawn ads. There were even hand-written letters between two schoolgirls.
The DeRises harnessed social media to help connect some of the history. A local historian uncovered the name Loux; Laura Loux might have owned the purse.
The war continued. The elegant butler stairs oozed old-world character. They stayed. From the kitchen was carved a cozy, custom-built breakfast nook. The dining room was decorated with framed vignettes of salvaged wallpaper samples with boisterous floral patterns. Renovations are still in the works.
While some things were salvaged, others had to change. The somber colors in vogue in the early 20th century were swapped for lighter tones more at home in the 2020s, like “moonlight mist.” Pastel blue and beige filled the bedrooms.
If the historic reno taught DeRise anything, it was about cost. The couple had spent $172,000, as of the time of writing. It was more than she had expected.
“Whatever the contractor says it will cost, triple it,” she said. “With an old house, you truly don’t know what you’re going to find when you open up a wall, which might add to the labor or materials originally quoted.”
“But we budgeted for it,” she added. “Luckily, Vinny is an extremely organized person and kept spreadsheets fully up to date with our budget and process.”
Neighbors in real life have commented, too, saying what a great job they did on their historic home.
And the latest addition? A nursery, making good on a promise to the former homeowner to continue the line of families making the 1800s house a home. The DeRises welcomed their newborn son last July.
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